RealVNC slow over network

Scott Salisbury · 10 Jun 2006 at 20:05

I've just formated all my PCs in the house and put VNC severs and viewers on them all. If control my laptop via my main PC (or the other way around) the performance is perfectly smooth. If I control my spare PC via my laptop or main PC the performance is very stuttery as if I'm controling it over the Internet.

Here's the weird part though, if I try to control my laptop or main PC via the spare PC (the one that stutters when being controlled) it's perfectly smooth. So its slow when being controlled but fine when using it to control other PCs.

Its not a serious problem but quite irritating.

If you followed that, does anybody have any idea what could be causing this?

EDIT > Should this have went into networking? Move as desired.

mr.bond · 10 Jun 2006 at 22:27

Does your spare PC have an image for it's desktop wallpaper? If so remove it, you can also do this in the VNC options, open the vnc properties and click the 'desktop' tab, tick 'remove wallpapers' on the machine you are accessing it from.

It might be the problem.

Scott Salisbury · 11 Jun 2006 at 20:18

Thanks for the reply.

Nah, I thought of this but it is still exactly the same with no walpaper at all, or a very complicated walpaper. I really have no clue what is causing it.

If it was network related (i.e. dodgey cables, difference network adapaters, interfierance) then it would affect the performance both ways wouldn't it? So it would be laggy when controlled AND while controlling other PCs via the spare.

edit> Problem is also exactly the same with other sharing programs (tried Remote Administrator).

I thought it might be the colours the viewers were set to, but even on lowest quality colours it is still exactly the same, no change at all.

riddlermarc · 11 Jun 2006 at 20:55

Is your spare pc old and/or have a crappy 1mb video card?

Trigger · 11 Jun 2006 at 22:30

Try disabling the firewall. That would cause a speed defect with only incoming traffic

Scott Salisbury · 12 Jun 2006 at 12:26

Thanks for replies.

Nah the system is the 'Asus Vintage AE1 Barebones System - AMD Socket 754'. I haven't put a graphics card in, but I'm not even using a monitor so I didn't see the point. I've tried it with and without the monitor though, to see if it made a difference.

I've only just bought it to use as a download box so its all new hardware.

I've tried it with all firewalls disabled, even the built in firewall on my router. No change.

All the graphics drivers for the onboard graphics are installed.

The thing is tho, if I do stuff on the PC with the monitor everything is smooth and normal, its just laggy over VNC. So if it was graphics/drivers issues it would be slow even when just using the PC?

Scott.

Otacon · 12 Jun 2006 at 12:34

VNC isnt the most efficient protocol, but if you cant use remote desktop then I recommend using UltraVNC and installing the optional kernel driver. Makes a huge difference to response time if you need it, though some would argue there's a small risk (never caused me an issue though, I even use it on a couple of production servers).

Scott Salisbury · 12 Jun 2006 at 13:07

Thanks, I might try that.

It still seems weird though because I've used an old 350MHz in the past as a download box (with xp on it) and used VNC/Radmin on it and I never had this problem it was still smoother than this. Its really starting to bug me now.